


Under the Cover of Night

by exuberant_imperfection



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY CRYSTY, M/M, Post-Winter Cup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 16:19:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4842170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exuberant_imperfection/pseuds/exuberant_imperfection
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eventually, Aomine gave in to his confusion. "So... why are you here?"</p><p>“I—was worried about you, after the game. But I didn't want to say anything in front of everyone.”</p><p>Aomine raised an eyebrow. “And you couldn’t just wait until tomorrow to call me during normal human hours because…?”</p><p>“Because I miss you, too."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Cover of Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chrystie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrystie/gifts).



> _It was always you_   
>  _Falling for me_   
>  _Now there's always time_   
>  _Calling for me_   
>  _I'm the light blinking at the end of the road_   
>  _Blink back to let me know_
> 
>  
> 
> "Always" by Panic! at the Disco

It was always the eyes.  
  
When Aomine had approached Kuroko to congratulate him after the game, his hands were in his pockets, his shoulders were relaxed, and his mouth was settled somewhere between a smirk and a grin. But his gaze darted away every time he made eye contact, and upon looking closely, Kuroko had seen that his eyes were subtly red-rimmed.  
  
So now, lying on a futon in the middle of the floor in Kagami’s apartment, even though Kuroko was surrounded by his teammates and exhausted from a long day of basketball-playing and subsequent victory-celebrating, he couldn’t get to sleep. Every time he tried, he remembered Aomine’s eyes, and the thought of him crying clamped down on Kuroko’s heart like a vice. His mind was fraught with concern and wouldn’t quiet down enough for him to relax.  
  
He checked his phone for the eighth time since everyone else had fallen asleep, squinting at the bright screen until his eyes adjusted. _4:36am_. It had only been twenty minutes since he’d last checked. He sighed in frustration and got up. Careful not to step on anyone, he made his way over to the door, grabbed his coat and scarf, and left. He didn’t think about where exactly he was planning to go, until he was already outside and walking down the sidewalk. The first thing that popped into his head was a fierce craving for a vanilla milkshake—the ultimate comfort food, in Kuroko’s opinion. His feet began heading in the direction of the 24-hour Maji Burger before he had even really made the decision.  
  
Ideally, his mood would have been lifted by the promise of a milkshake and the fresh air from the walk would have cleared his head, so he could return to Kagami’s apartment and claim at least an hour or two of peaceful sleep with no one noticing his absence…Unfortunately, he could easily get to Maji Burger on autopilot, the night was still and quiet, and he was alone, so there was nothing to prevent his mind from wandering directly back to the reason he couldn’t sleep in the first place.  
  
Kuroko had never really seen Aomine cry before. He had come very close that one day in the rain, but if he had actually cried Kuroko hadn’t seen it—in the moments before Aomine had turned and walked away his vision had already been blurred with his own tears.  
  
The only other time had been just a few months before that day, one weekend towards the end of July in their second year.

* * *

  
They were both lying on Kuroko’s bed on a slowly cooling summer evening, alternating between casual conversation and comfortable silence, too lazy to get up and turn on the lights as the sun set. The darker the room got, the more it felt like they were untouchable, in their own corner of the universe, with no responsibilities, and no consequences, and no “real world” to return to. Sometime shortly after the room had gone completely dark, Aomine went dead still, and said quietly, “Hey, Tetsu…?”  
  
Kuroko’s heart skipped a beat at the odd tone in his voice. “Yes, Aomine-kun?” he murmured.  
  
He felt Aomine shift beside him, probably from lying on his back to lying on his side, facing Kuroko, because his voice sounded closer when he next spoke. “Does the future ever seem… scary, to you?”  
  
Kuroko mimicked him, also rolling onto his side to face Aomine. His mind began to race, wondering what he should say, wondering what could possibly be on Aomine’s mind. “Now that I’m playing basketball with Aomine-kun and everyone else, nothing seems very scary anymore.”  
  
“…yeah,” Aomine said, not sounding very sure at all.  
  
Kuroko hardly dared to breathe while waiting for him to continue, in fear of disrupting the atmosphere. Each second that passed seemed to add weight to the air.  
  
Aomine was practically whispering now. “But… what if that changes?”  
  
He tried not to let his mind jump to conclusions, but he couldn’t help all the awful implications that he heard in that question. “…Why would it change?” he asked, careful not to let his voice be affected by the panicked quickening of his heartbeat.  
  
They were both still for a moment, and then Aomine shifted. “I don’t know,” he said, lying on his stomach, judging by his muffled voice. He was also very close now, because Kuroko could feel the warmth emanating from his body. For a moment, he thought that maybe that was it, that Aomine would sit up in a second and make some dumb joke and things would go back to normal.  
  
But then, Aomine sighed into the blankets. “I don’t _know_ ,” he said, and Kuroko froze. That crack in his voice was definitely not normal, and with their proximity he could also feel Aomine shuddering ever so slightly. He continued speaking slowly, between uneven breaths. “But… I’m scared that, if it did change… I wouldn’t be able to… to stop it.”  
  
With Aomine’s usual easy confidence nowhere in sight, Kuroko felt lost. It was all he could do to hold back his own tears as he listened to his best friend crying in the dark, so softly that he would have never known if they hadn’t been this close to each other. Kuroko usually had a lot of self-control, and never did anything without thinking it through thoroughly, but in their hidden corner of the universe, in the darkness of his room, the only thing that mattered to him was Aomine. So when he felt the urge to be closer to him, he immediately shifted on the bed, bracing Aomine’s shaking side with his shoulder, and resting his cheek against Aomine’s arm.  
  
“I’ll always be here. That will never change,” he murmured into Aomine’s sleeve.  
  
Aomine went still for a moment, then sniffled and laughed softly, his voice now unmuffled by the blankets. “How stupid of me, I overlooked the most important thing,” he said, throwing an arm over Kuroko’s shoulders and ruffling his hair. But the cheer in his voice was shallow and fleeting, and the energy of the affectionate gesture was half-hearted—after a moment, Aomine’s arm settled between Kuroko’s shoulder blades, and instead of ruffling, Aomine’s fingers gently threaded through the hair at the nape of his neck.  
  
Kuroko was suddenly very grateful that it was too dark for them to properly see each other, as heat rushed to his face. It was dead silent in the room, but between his pounding heart and a rush of conflicting emotions, there was a cacophony inside his head. He wanted very badly to know more about what was bothering Aomine, and if there was something he could do to help. He was afraid that if he let this moment pass quietly without asking Aomine to talk more about what was on his mind, he would never have another opportunity, and Aomine would be another step closer to being out of his reach. But he was also worried that prying too much would push Aomine away—either way, losing him was not something Kuroko liked to even think about, let alone accept as a future possibility of any kind.  
  
And it was especially difficult for him to imagine a future without Aomine at this particular moment, pressed against his side, sharing his warmth in the pleasantly cool darkness of a summer night. It was too easy to get lost in the feeling of Aomine stroking his hair, and he had to suppress the hitch in his breath every time Aomine’s fingers brushed the sensitive skin on the back of his neck.  
  
“I’m really glad you’re here.” Aomine’s voice was little more than a whisper.  
  
“I’m really glad to be here,” Kuroko said just as softly, wishing he had something better to say, but hoping that this would be enough for now.  
  
He wasn’t sure when they both drifted off to sleep, but when he woke up, the sun was shining through the window directly into his eyes. He might’ve been more annoyed by it if it weren’t for Aomine’s arms wrapped around him, clutching him snugly to his chest. After a minute of memorizing the way it felt, Kuroko gently extricated himself from Aomine’s grasp—he didn’t know how Aomine would react to this when not under the cover of night… and he didn’t particularly want that question answered when he wasn’t sure what the answer would be.

* * *

  
Kuroko sighed. He’d pushed that memory aside for a long time, but found he couldn’t quite will himself to do that tonight. Instead, it draped itself over him like a cloak, and he relived the images and sounds and sensations over and over again, conflicted feelings assaulting him.  
  
He remembered being so glad that Aomine had trusted him enough to open up to him, even a little bit. And he’d even felt vaguely hopeful that maybe, just maybe, Aomine felt the same way he did, felt that heart-pounding _I want to be closer to you, I want to hold onto you and never let you go, is this love?_ feeling… But he also remembered watching Aomine’s walls build right back up, even stronger than ever before. And he remembered the sinking realization only a few weeks later, when Aomine passed by his outstretched fist with a cynical dismissal, that whatever opportunity had presented itself to him that night was now long gone, far beyond his reach, possibly forever.  
  
Kuroko took a deep breath and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, trying to shake himself out of it—crying on a random city sidewalk at five in the morning was not something he particularly wanted to add to his list of life experiences.  
  
And besides, he’d been wrong, hadn’t he? It hadn't been forever. Maybe it wasn’t exactly the way it used to be, but he had Aomine back. Things were okay.  
  
…Right?  
  
Kuroko arrived at Maji Burger, hesitated in front of the doors… and then turned to head for the nearest train station instead. A milkshake might make him feel better for the night, but it wouldn’t give him the answers he needed.

* * *

  
It was like the night after the loss to Seirin all over again… except worse, because not only was his mind unsettled, he wasn’t even physically exhausted from playing a game. So, Aomine gave up attempting to sleep pretty early on in the night. He turned the light back on and went back and forth between playing dumb games on his phone and flipping through various gravure magazines.  
  
Time passed slowly. He tried his best not to watch the clock. Every so often his attention drifted from whatever distraction he was engaged in, and his mind wandered, and he wouldn’t realize it until his face was twisted into a pained grimace and the realization from the game earlier burned behind his eyes—at which point, he would blindly punch the nearest inanimate object and try to go back to something mindless. Very quickly, “going to the bathroom to tend to yet another wound on his hand because he wasn’t paying attention to what he was punching” became another addition to his list of mindless distractions.  
  
By five in the morning, his hands were littered with lazily applied bandages, his eyes ached with fatigue, the knot of frustration in his chest seemed to have become a permanent fixture, and he was running out of distractions. (He’d even tried masturbating— _tried_ , because for whatever STUPID fucking reason, instead of distracting him from his thoughts of Tetsu, it made them _even worse_. So. He stopped. Went to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on his face for good measure.)  
  
At 5:11am, his phone started ringing.  
  
His instinctual response was annoyance, but after a moment’s consideration, he figured that whoever it was—probably Satsuki—it would at least be a break from the monotony. So he picked up the phone.  
  
“Hello?” he said, flopping backwards onto his bed…  
  
_“Hello, Aomine-kun.”_  
  
…only to bolt upright again at the familiar, definitely-not-Satsuki, voice. “Tetsu?”  
  
_“I’m surprised you answered so quickly; I assumed you’d be asleep.”_  
  
The sound of Tetsu’s velvet-smooth voice, along with the dark early morning sky just barely beginning to lighten and the sleepless ache in his eyes, brought back a slew of memories that he’d tried to push aside but couldn’t quite forget. _Why do you do this to me?_ he thought as his heartbeat sped up. He wanted to ask, _“Why are you calling me?”_ , but what he ended up saying instead was, “Shouldn’t you be asleep, too?”  
  
_“Yes, I should.”_  
  
Aomine rolled his eyes. Typical Tetsu—he’d always answer the question, but in the most useless way possible. You had to read between the lines to have any sort of meaningful conversation with the guy. Luckily, Aomine was pretty good at jumping to conclusions, which, in this case, was a useful skill.  
  
“Couldn’t sleep, huh?” he asked. Tetsu didn’t reply immediately, so after a moment of hesitation, he added, “Why not? You won, right? What’s there to be restless about?”  
  
_“You.”_  
  
The answer came quickly, and ended abruptly, followed by the anxious silence of someone who’d let something slip that they hadn’t meant to.  
  
Aomine didn’t say anything at first either, but in his surprise, he couldn’t stop a moment of nervous laughter escaping his throat. “What—why the hell—?”  
  
_“You cried during the game.”_  
  
Aomine froze. Held his breath, even. _How does he know that?_  
  
As if reading his mind (not that it surprised him at this point), Tetsu continued, _“I didn’t see it. I just noticed your eyes afterwards._ ” He paused, then asked hesitantly, _“…Why?”_  
  
Aomine spent several moments in silence, thinking frantically about how the hell he was going to talk his way out of this one. He even briefly entertained the thought of hanging up and avoiding Tetsu for a while. But then, with a sickening pang of guilt, he realized that this was exactly what had gone wrong last time—him pushing Tetsu away, pushing everyone away, and running from his problems.  
  
_“…Aomine-kun?”_  
  
Yet again, it was Tetsu’s voice that affected him the most, that broke past every wall he’d ever built around himself. …And wasn’t that what he really wanted? Wasn't that what his entire realization earlier had been about? He’d left behind everything that he’d thought had been holding him down, and waited at the top for a chance to reclaim his happiness… but hadn’t Tetsu been the answer all along?  
  
Sleep-deprived and emotionally exhausted, Aomine had no idea how to articulate any of this at the moment. So he ended up blurting out the one thing he knew for sure: “I miss you.”  
  
For a while, all he could hear was the faint sound of Tetsu breathing. He didn’t know how much time passed, only that it was enough for him to think about what he'd just said and wince, heat rushing to his face, but not quite enough for him to decide whether he regretted saying it. It could have been seconds, or minutes. He might have thought it was an hour of near silence, except the sky was still mostly dark when Tetsu finally spoke.  
  
_“Come outside.”_  
  
Aomine blinked. “Wha—?” He jumped up and headed over to his window. “Outside—you’re—are you outside of my house right now???”  
  
_“Yes, I am.”_  
  
Sure enough, when Aomine pulled his curtains aside and looked out, Tetsu was standing on the sidewalk, phone up to his ear, looking up at the window.  
  
He stared for a moment, then tore his gaze away from the window and donned a coat and shoes before heading outside. He opened the front door of his house and went to step out, fully intent on asking Tetsu why the _hell_ he’d decided to show up here at five in the morning—and then froze in the doorway, eyes fixated on Tetsu. He was standing right on the edge of the pool of light cast by a nearby street lamp, so that half of him was bathed in golden light and the other half was fading into the darkness of night. It was much more striking up close than it had been from the window—the word “beautiful” drifted unbidden across his thoughts, and he immediately averted his eyes. He turned to shut the door behind himself and stepped down onto the sidewalk, but he didn't step within the reach of the streetlight, only stared at Tetsu from the darkness. They were both quiet for a while.  
  
Eventually, Aomine gave in to his confusion. "So... why are you here?" he asked.  
  
“I—was worried about you, after the game. But I didn't want to say anything in front of everyone.”  
  
Aomine raised an eyebrow. “And you couldn’t just wait until tomorrow to call me during normal human hours because…?”  
  
“Because I miss you, too,” Tetsu said matter-of-factly with a steady gaze on Aomine.  
  
Aomine completely lost the ability to formulate a response, as his entire brain was currently busy trying to process what he had just heard.  
  
"I'm sorry," Tetsu said suddenly, and this time Aomine was shocked into replying.  
  
"Wh—for what???" he asked, utterly bewildered.  
  
Tetsu looked past Aomine with a distant expression, as though he were remembering something. He bit his lip briefly before speaking. “I… promised you I would always be there for you. That that would never change.”  
  
The memory of that night flooded Aomine’s mind all at once, and he felt his face flush a little.  
  
Tetsu turned his head away from the streetlamp, so his face was shrouded in darkness as he added, “But I left you.”  
  
Aomine stared at him, mouth ajar, completely flabbergasted. Tetsu, apologizing to him... _for leaving?_ "Are you an idiot?" Aomine snapped, maybe a bit more meanly than intended, because Tetsu turned back to face him with wide eyes. It didn't seem like he was going to speak anytime soon though, which was fine, because Aomine had plenty more to say. "You should _not_ be apologizing to me, _I’m_ the one who fucked up. All you ever did was try to help. And yeah, maybe you didn't know what you were doing, but neither did I! Neither did anyone else! And that's why everything went to shit in the first place! And I should have realized that and I shouldn't have pushed you away. I thought I was doing both you and me a favor by doing that but..." He ran a hand through his hair and let out a mirthless chuckle. "...I needed you. The whole time, I needed you. That's what I realized today. That's why, at the game I was..." He felt tears burning in his eyes again. _Shit_. He averted his gaze.  
  
"Aomine-kun..." Tetsu murmured. Aomine looked back up at him and saw the slightest motion that told him Tetsu was about to move towards him. But he hesitated, and in that moment, Aomine stepped forward instead, into the light of the street lamp, and before he could have second thoughts he wrapped his arms around Tetsu.  
  
The movement of Tetsu hugging him back several long seconds later was what finally prompted Aomine to speak. "I'm the one who should be apologizing.” He rested his forehead on top of Tetsu's head and sighed. “Sorry I fucked everything up."  
  
Tetsu’s response was barely more than a whisper: “I forgave you a long time ago.”  
  
Aomine froze. “You—” He let out a mirthless laugh of disbelief. _How?_ After all the times he had hurt Tetsu, looked him straight in the eye and said awful things and just watched him break before him… how could Tetsu have _already_ forgiven him? “You’re too good for me,” Aomine said eventually, pulling back a little to look down at Tetsu with a rueful smile. “You know that, right?”  
  
“Yes,” Tetsu responded bluntly. Aomine was about to get a little offended ( _“You weren’t supposed to agree with me, idiot!”_ ), but the words died in his throat when Tetsu looked up at him with a teasing half-smirk, tear-streaked cheeks, and those beautiful blue eyes that captured Aomine’s gaze like a moth drawn to a light. At his lack of response, Tetsu continued, “But that’s never stopped me from loving you anyway.”  
  
Aomine stood there with his mouth half-open, the significance of Tetsu’s words weighing down his tongue and impeding his ability to speak. He still couldn’t tear his eyes away, though, so he saw the thinly veiled uncertainty enter Tetsu’s expression as the silence stretched on. “Uh—I—uh…” Aomine stuttered under Tetsu’s searching gaze. “Are… are you sure?”  
  
Tetsu laughed a little. “I’ve had three years with you and a year without you to think about it, so… yes, I’m sure,” he said, but his voice slowly faded and his face fell as he went on. “But if you…” He stepped back, out of Aomine’s arms, and looked at the ground. “You don’t have to—I can just—it’s fine—”  
  
Aomine could barely keep up with his own thoughts, so he had no idea what was going through Tetsu’s head as he spouted fragmented sentences, but he was looking increasingly upset, so it couldn’t be good. “Wait, no, hold on—” Aomine tried to interrupt, but Tetsu continued talking, so instead, Aomine grabbed his face and tilted it upwards so Tetsu would look at him. “Tetsu. Shut up and let me think for a damn second, would ya?”  
  
“But—”  
  
“No buts.” Aomine put a hand over Tetsu’s mouth. Then, when it seemed he’d stopped attempting to talk he removed it, and just looked at him. Studied his face. Ran a hand gently through his hair and rested it at the nape of his neck. Dropped his other hand to his waist and pulled him close again.  
  
Color was rising to Tetsu’s face, and he murmured, “Aomine-kun, I don’t believe this counts as ‘thinking’, exactl—”  
  
Aomine shushed him. He _was_ thinking—really! He was thinking about middle school, about all the time they had spent together, all the late-night practices and meandering walks home, all the week-long school vacations when they would spend days at a time together, often running out of things to talk about, but never tiring of each other’s company. He was thinking about all the nights he'd spent sleeping next to Tetsu, all the times he'd woken up in the middle of the night and just felt the sudden need to be closer to him, and that warm feeling in his chest when he woke up to Tetsu's voice and soft touches in the morning. He was thinking about all the times he’d tried to put words to all the things Tetsu made him feel, because it wasn’t that he had felt empty before, but now that Tetsu had claimed such a large place in his life, he couldn’t imagine it being filled by anyone or anything but Tetsu, and he’d never quite been sure what that meant, or how to define it. But he was also thinking that, maybe—  
  
_“But that’s never stopped me from loving you anyway.”_  
  
—just maybe, he knew now, what it was he felt.  
  
But he still wasn’t quite sure how to say it, wasn’t sure where to even begin. He did know one thing though: the longer he stared at Tetsu, the more he just wanted to make him smile again. And, well… maybe _that_ was a good way to begin? It was something he knew how to do, at least. He reached up to wipe at the tear streaks on Tetsu’s face, hand lingering on his cheek, then said, “You wanna—uh… Want a milkshake?”  
  
To Aomine’s relief, the faint trepidation faded from Tetsu’s expression. It was replaced by confusion for a moment—he opened and closed his mouth wordlessly once—and then that cleared, and he got that look in his eyes that made Aomine feel like, for better or for worse, Tetsu could see right through him and read his every feeling and thought.  
  
(It was always the eyes. Kuroko gazed into Aomine’s eyes, watched as all the answers he'd been searching for unfolded within them—none yet translated into words, but he understood.)  
  
Most importantly, Tetsu was smiling. “I would love a milkshake.”  
  
Aomine nodded and let go of him, the tension steadily flowing away as things seemed to be returning to more familiar territory. “Okay, cool. Let’s go,” he said, turning to begin walking in the direction of the nearest Maji Burger. But then he felt a tug at his sleeve, and paused to watch Tetsu slide his hand down to lightly lace their fingers together. When Aomine looked up at his face, he was practically _radiating_ happiness, with his still-widening smile and the corners of his eyes crinkling as he met Aomine’s gaze.  
  
Aomine looked away, but found his face heating up anyway. He muttered something under his breath—the only decipherable word of which was “embarrassing”—but he also gripped Tetsu’s hand more firmly as he turned around to start towards Maji Burger again. This time, Tetsu followed, falling into step easily beside him. As they walked down the street, the sky was steadily lightening around them, the city slowly stirring awake to begin a new day.

**Author's Note:**

> HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY CRYSTY OMG i totally forget to mention I finished this for ur birthday that was like one million years ago so HERE U GO LOVE U <3


End file.
